Perception Dancer rebuild

[Feral]

Ok, started on the repairs to the dancer Ray picked up at recycle land the other day.

Close inspection revealed the existing coaming is a right off, way to sun damaged to bother trying to repair, and very thin anyway, probably no more than 1mm.

So first task, get the jig saw out and remove the remains of what is there.

Whilst doing that I put the bit of high pressure poly pipe I had scrounged in to the environmentally friendly green heating chamber to soften it up so I could shape it to fit. (IE in the sun on the lawn)

Next was to weld up the cracks in the top deck. It is pretty obvious the old girl is just about gone to god, the top half of the plastic on the deck behind the seat is brittle, crocodile cracked and generally in a sad way, but still firm enough. I decided to go through with the resto, both for the practice, and it should at least last the summer for the kids! However it will be a bare bones job, wont bother with rod holders etc.

Interesting yak to work on, the plastic in it melts at a much lower temp than the other 3 yaks I have worked on, but its like it is a multiple layer plastic, with the centre layer refusing to melt at all, it just softens like pasta. The outer layers bubble and boil at the setting I previously used to weld yaks!

The painful bit being because of the multi layer plastic, getting donour plastic is almost impossible, until I hit on the idea of using the dust created by sawing off the coaming. The "unmeltable" bits work like reo in the welded matrix (or so I am telling myself!)

Once the existing cracks were welded up (the darker colour is due to impurities in the dust from the black plastic at the front of the coaming) it was time to fit the now softened poly pipe and clamp in to place. (Those expensive jumper leads finally have a use!)

I chose to do the join in two types of silastic, a fast set acetic cure one usually used for automotive applications for the initial thin "stick" layer, supposed to go off in 30 minutes. Then a cover coating to good depth of the good old all clear. The all clear being what I ultimately expect to hold it all together.

Ran out of clamps before I could go all the way around, so will leave the last little bit until another day,also the sun wasn't hot enough to quite let me do the curve at the top of the yak, with a slight kink. So I figure to wait until the mrs is out and the coast is clear to "borrow" her hair dryer!

The poly looks quite good as the coaming, and should stiffen it all up nicely.

[Dazzamcgee]

Well done Fezz looks like it will do the job!

[faulked]

can you fit in that yak or is it pure kiddie

love the jumper clamp idea ill remeber that

[Feral]

Not a hope of me getting in it. Alex will be ok (the 11 yo) but Calum wont have a hope (the 13 yo) its a very small yak. Between those bits of moulded foam, it would be flat out being 45cm.